Firefly Gadroon (8 page)

‘Hong Kong, Dig,’ I said sadly. ‘Made this month. That dirt’s soot from an open oil-wick.’

‘You’re kidding—’

It was a ceramic of a man washing himself and stopping a lady from entering. This ‘Modesty’ figure is one of the rarest, but the commonest (a couple getting into bed, in the form of a candleholder) is also forged.

‘I’ve no time even for the originals either, Dig,’ I told him, but he was mortified.

‘You rnust be wrong, Lovejoy—’

He too hadn’t seen any coal carvings lately, so I pushed on. All fairings are ugly to me. Hong Kong will make you a gross of the wretched things, properly decorated and meticulously copied, for two quid or even less. A couple of
dozen of these forgeries will keep you in idle affluence a year or so – if you’re unscrupulous, that is.

As poor as I arrived, I borrowed a coin from Lisa and telephoned the White Hart. By a strange stroke of luck Tinker was in there getting kaylied. He didn’t know where Lily had got the three carvings from, either. I slammed the phone down in a temper. A harassed woman was waiting for the phone. She had this little girl with eyes like blue saucers.

‘I’m so sorry to ask you,’ she said to me. ‘But could you watch Bernice while I phone? I’ll only be a second—’

Feeling a right nerk, I sat on the pedestrian railing holding this little girl’s hand outside the phone-box. Brad happened by on his way to viewing day at the auction. Seeing me there looking daft he drew breath to guffaw but I raised a warning finger and he soberly crossed over looking everywhere but at me. Bernice was about three, and obviously a real traffic lover. She kept trying to crawl under everybody’s feet into the motor-car maelstrom. She told me about her toy, a wooden donkey pulling a cart. And the cart was full of seashells. I thought about it a lot. Pewter sheen, like sun on an estuary. Donkey. Cart. Seashells. And a little hut. I showed her my coal carvings, trying to keep my legs out of everybody’s way.

Bernice’s mother came out, breathlessly dropping parcels like they do. ‘Thank you so much. Was she good? It’s the traffic I’m worried about . . .’

‘My pleasure,’ I said. And I meant it.

If I’d had time I might have chatted the bird up. As it was, the baby’s toy donkey-cart full of seashells had reminded me that down in the estuary Drummer and Germoline, pride of the seaside sands, made an honest if precarious living. I tore up the streets looking for a lift and saw Dolly’s car by the war memorial.

Dolly ran me down to the estuary going on for three o’clock. Our whole coast hereabouts is indented by creeks, inlets, tidal mudflats and marshes. As you approach the sealands you notice that the trees become less enthusiastic, stunted and leaning away from gales on the low skyline. They have a buttoned-up look about them even on the mildest day. Then the sea marshes show between the long runs of banks and dykes. You see the masts foresting thinly among the dunes’ tufted undulations. Anglers abound, sitting gawping at their strings in all weathers. A few blokes can be seen digging in the marsh flats among the weeds. Well, whatever turns you on, but it’s a hell of a hobby in a rainstorm. A lot of visitors come to lurk among the reeds with binoculars when they could be holidaying in a lovely smokey town among the antique shops, which only goes to show what a rum lot people are.

‘Head for the staithe, Dolly.’

‘I must be
mad
in this weather, Lovejoy.’

The birds are different, too, sort of runners and shovellers instead of the bouncy peckers that raise Cain in my patch if you’re slow with their morning cheese.

There seemed a lot of fresh air about. The wind was whipping up as Dolly’s motor lurched us down the gravel
path between the sea dykes, blowing in gusts and hurtling white clouds low over the water. A staithe is a wharf alongside a creek where boats can come and lie tilted on sands at low water. You tie them to buoys or these iron rings and leave them just to hang about. Tides come and go, and the boats float or sag as the case may be. The main river’s estuary’s littered with the wretched things.

‘There’s
nobody
here, Lovejoy.’ Accusations again.

‘Drummer’s bound to be.’

‘I should have brought an extra cardigan.’

We got out. The wind whipped my hair across to blind me and roared in my ears. The force of it was literally staggering. For a moment I wondered what the terrible racket was. It sounded like a thousand crystal chandeliers tinkling in weird cacophony. Then I realized. The masts. They’re not wood any more. They’re some tin stuff, hollow all the way down. And the wind was jerking the ropes and wires, thrashing every one against its mast. There’s never less than a hundred boats at least, either drawn up or slumped on the flats at low water. Say three taps a second, that’s three hundred musical chimes every pulse beat, which in one hour makes—

‘Lovejoy. For heaven’s
sake
!’

Dolly had gathered her camelhair coat tight about her, clutching the collar at her chin. Her hair was lashing about her face. I’d never consciously noticed before, but women in high heels bend one leg and lean the foot outwards when they’re standing still. In a rising wind they exaggerate the posture. Odd, that. She was on the seaward side of me, caught against the pale scudding sky. She looked perished and had to shout over the racket of the gale and the musical masts.

‘What’s the matter?’ she shrieked. ‘Lovejoy. Stop daydreaming. We could be home, with a fire . . .’

‘You’re beautiful, Dolly.’

Her face changed. She can’t have heard but saw my lips move. She stepped to me, letting go of her coat, which snapped open and almost tugged her off her feet. We reached for each other, all misty, and this bloody donkey came between us. Its wet nose ploshed horribly into my palm.

‘Christ
!’ I leapt a mile. We’d found Germoline.

‘Morning, Lovejoy. Miss.’

My heart was thumping while I wiped my hand on my sleeve. It had frightened me to death. Dolly was livid. Normally she’d have scurried about for some bread, or whatever you give donkeys, but just now I could tell she could have cheerfully crippled it. She muttered under her breath and concentrated on not getting blown out to sea.

‘Wotcher, Drummer.’ He had his estuary gear on, the tartan beret with its bedraggled tuft. Still the battered sand-stained clogs and the scarf trailing across the mud, the frayed cuffs and battledress khaki turn-ups. His donkey looked smaller if anything. I wondered vaguely if they shrank.

‘Say hello to Germoline, then.’ He grinned at Dolly. ‘She loves Lovejoy.’

Dolly managed a distant pat. Germoline stepped closer and leant on me. This sounds graceful but isn’t. She wears a collar made from an old tyre with spherical jingle-bells, the sort that adorn reindeer so elegantly. Usually you can hear her for miles. The din of the boats had submerged her approach. Add to that the problem of her two-wheeled cart – it holds four children on little side benches – and even the friendliest lean becomes a threat. Anyhow I leant back, feeling a right pillock.

‘Want a ride?’ Every time Drummer grins his false teeth fall together with a clash. Whatever folk say about our estuary, I’ll bet it’s the noisiest estuary in the business.

‘A word,’ I bawled.

‘My house, then.’

I scanned the estuary without ecstasy. Over the reed-banks stands Drummer’s shed, looking impossible to reach across dunes and snaking rivulets that join the sea a couple of furlongs off. A row of proper houses stands back behind the wharf where the pathway joins the main road, aloof from the seaside rabble. The tallest of them is a coastguard station. It’s not much to look at but it has those masts and a proper flagpole and everything. Joe Poges was on his white-railed balcony with binoculars. He waved. Joe’s one of life’s merry jokers, but all the same I quite like him. His missus gives Drummer dinner now and then. Knowing how much I would be hating all this horrible fresh air, Joe did a quick knees-bend exercise and beat his chest like Tarzan. It was too far to see his grin but I knew he’d fall about for days at his witticism and tell everybody they should have seen my face. I waved and the distant figure saluted.

‘That’s Joe, Miss,’ Drummer explained, his teeth crashing punctuation. ‘Home, Germoline.’

Dolly tried clinging to my arm on the way over but I shook her off. I was in enough trouble. There was no real path, just patches of vaguely darker weeds showing where the mud would hold. Twice I heard Dolly yelp and a quick splash. Life’s tough and I didn’t wait. I was too anxious to put my feet where Germoline put hers. Halfway across the sea marsh Germoline turned of her own accord facing me and waited while Drummer unhitched the cart. I swear she was grinning as we set off again. Her hooves were covered in the sticky mud. Drummer always ties blue and white ribbons to her tail, his football team’s colours.

We made it. He’s laid a small tiled area near the shed door. Germoline jongled her way to a lean-to and started
eating from a manger inside. Dolly arrived gasping and wind-tousled.

‘Lovejoy,’ she wheezed. ‘You horrid—’

‘Keep Germoline company a minute, please, love,’ I said. Drummer went in to brew up.

It took a second for her to realize. Then she exploded. ‘Stay out
here
?’ She tried to push me aside. ‘In
this
? Of all the—’

I shoved her out and slammed the door. It has to be first things first. She banged and squawked but I dropped the bolt. ‘Sorry, Drummer.’

Drummer was grinning through crashes of pottery teeth. ‘Still the same old Lovejoy. Here, son. Wash them cups.’

I pumped the ancient handle while Drummer lit an oil lamp. There are scores of freshwater springs hereabouts, and some even emerge in the sea. Old sailors still fill up with fresh water miles off the North Sea coast where the freshwater ‘pipes’, as they’re called, ascend to the ocean’s surface. They say you can tell where a pipe is from the sort of fish that knock around. Drummer chucked some driftwood into his iron stove. There’s not a lot of space, just a camp bed, a table and a chair or two, shelves and a picture of Lord Kitchener and a blue glass vase with dried flowers. A few clothes hung behind the door with Germoline’s spare harness.

‘Coal carvings, Drummer.’ I’d checked Dolly couldn’t hear. ‘Know anything?’

‘Ar,’ he answered, nodding when I looked round enquiringly from the sink because locally the same word can mean no as well as yes. ‘It’s getting the right sort of tar coal nowadays.’

‘Much call for them?’

‘Ar,’ with a headshake. ‘I sold three this week.’ 65

I sat at his rickety old table and pulled out the three carvings. ‘Drummer,’ I said sadly, ‘they’re horrible.’

‘What d’you expect, Lovejoy?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘Anyway, people needn’t buy them. And they aren’t bad as all that.’

True. But if these three monstrosities were Drummer’s idea of art, then sure as God sends Sunday he’d never carved the lovely firefly cage.

‘Just suppose a bloke saw a coal carving,’ I got in when his teeth plummeted and shut him up, ‘so intricate and clever it blew his mind. Where would he look for whoever did it? Think, Drummer.’

‘I already know. My mate Bill.’ Drummer inhaled a ton of snuff from a tea-caddy and voomed like a landmine. The shed misted with his contaminating droplets. ‘That’s better—’

‘Who?’

‘Bill Hepplestone. Me and him was mates – till he married up this rich young tart. Farm and all. Not far from here.’ He pointed to show me the kettle was boiling. ‘Stopped coming over at the finish. Too posh. Always trouble, posh women are. Never take up with posh, Lovejoy.’

‘Hepplestone?’
The name’s not all that common. I filled the kettle. ‘Any idea where he lives?’

‘Dead, son. Poor old Bill. Used to be inland, place called Lesser Cornard in a bleeding great manor house.’

‘Right, Drummer. Ta.’ I rose to open the door, finger to my lips. ‘Not a word. I owe you a quid, right?’

Dolly fell in, blue from the wind. Germoline gave me the bent eye as I shut the door again. It didn’t look as if they’d exactly got on. I beamed at Dolly but all I could think was, great. That’s what I need, to go spitting in the face of fortune. Some uniformed berk of a chauffeur wants to take me right to the bloody place I’m searching for, and
I thump him senseless. Really great. Sometimes I’m just thick. Mrs Hepplestone of Hall Lodge Manor. Widow of Bill the coal carver.

Meanwhile Dolly was tottering towards the glowing stove, whining miserably.

‘Ah! You’re
there
, Dolly!’ I tried to beam but she stayed mad.

‘I’ll kill you, Lovejoy.’

‘Now, Dolly . . .’

‘We’re done, Lovejoy.’ She swung at me, blazing hatred. ‘Finished! Do you hear? I’ve taken my last insult from you. I’ve put up with you long enough—’

I shrugged at Drummer, who was enjoying it all, chuckling as he poured the tea out. Women are an unreasonable lot. Now I’d have to find the bloody chauffeur and say I’d made a terrible mistake. What a life.

The next half-hour was the longest I’d ever spent. Dolly sat there in front of the stove with her back speaking volumes of annoyance. She ignored the tea I took her even though I’d given her Drummer’s only saucer.

We left when Dolly had warmed enough to move. Drummer came out with us to lead us over the salt marshes.

‘Tide’s turning,’ he remarked brightly, pointing. It looked the same to me, just a few scattered folk among the boats slanting on the mud, though I noticed one or two boats were floating now.

Looking seaward, I saw two vaguely familiar figures. I paused to focus better with my streaming eyes peering into the cold north wind. A man and a girl. They were over among the oyster-beds and seemed to be buying some. A fisher lad was hauling on a rope while the man pointed and the girl crouched to peer down into the water. Neither turned to look our way, not even when Germoline brayed and tried to catch Dolly’s heel with her hoof. Odd, that,
I thought. The fisher lad heard our donkey, though, and turned to wave, laughing. He takes care of them, the very same oyster beds that the Romans established twenty centuries ago. I waved and we moved on.

We splashed our way across the precarious muddy shore. It was riskier than before. Puddles were now ponds, and small rivulets had become streams flowing swiftly inland. Once-placid dinghies now tugged irritably at mooring ropes. The almost imperceptible path was untraceable. In several places Germoline’s hoofprints were immersed in the mud and Drummer led us in a detour. We were almost back on the foreshore before I realized. Maud. Only Maud, our beloved social worker, could be that scruffy, hair uncombed and patched jeans frayed, quite at home among a straggle of estuary people hooked on boating. And the neatly dressed bloke, yachting cap, blazer and white flannels, giving orders to an oyster lad as if to the manner born – who else but good old Devlin, doubtless calling for a few dozen oysters to have with his champers at the hunt ball. I could even spot his bandaged hand from here. I prayed he hadn’t seen us, and hurried on after Germoline and the others.